In his preferred black marker, President Donald Trump made handwritten edits to the public statement meant to mitigate his disastrous joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, according to a Tuesday Washington Post report.
Sharp-eyed photographers got shots of the four-page document. In all caps and a misspelling, Trump reminded himself on the first page that “THERE WAS NO COLUSION.”
The President wrote in sharpie “THERE WAS NO COLUSION” during a meeting with congressional members. pic.twitter.com/dYk88Ot9h8
— Tom Brenner (@tombrennerphoto) July 17, 2018
He also struck a sentence concerning “anyone involved in that meddling to justice.”
Per the Post, other changes include his adding of “for years, relations could not have [illegible] worse,” and striking a paragraph reading “Now I understand there are some in Washington who don’t want diplomacy. This rejection of diplomacy is the same mindset that dragged us into Iraq and Libya.” He also crossed out a line following that said: “Any fool can start a war, but real [illegible] is forging peace.”
The shots of his prepared remarks also allow readers to see where he ad-libbed in his spoken statement. Most notably, he verbally added the following paragraph after asserting that he believes the intelligence agencies’ findings that Russia did hack the 2016 election:
“Could be other people also. A lot of people out there. There was no collusion at all, and people have seen that and they’ve seen that strongly. The House has already come out very strongly on that, a lot of people have come out strongly on that. …”
